Episode 450 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Ben Nye and Sage Nye of Venture Guides.
Ben was a guest on The VentureFizz Podcast eight years ago for Episode 50, so it is only fitting that he is a 2nd time guest 400 episodes later. Perfect timing!
https://soundcloud.com/venturefizz/episode-50-ben-nye-ceo-at-turbonomic
Back then, Ben was the CEO of Turbonomic which was acquired by IBM in 2021 for a massive exit.
Ben has gone on to launch Venture Guides along with Sage, who is a founding team member.
The format of this podcast is very different for me. I was onsite at their offices at 100 Causeway in Boston and took a tour with Ben and Sage.
Let’s just say, Boston needs more investors like Venture Guides.
Yes, lots of VC firms have their lane for stage of investing and might be focused on a particular sector, but Venture Guides is different and I saw it first hand. There are many reasons, but here are two examples:
First, their office includes a very large shared working space for their portfolio companies. On the tour, they shared details on several of them: Assail, VibeIQ, SpartanX, Memcyco, IO River, EON, Hoop.dev, env zero, Precog, Odigos, and Elastio.
The best part… only 2 of the companies that are currently located at Venture Guides were started in Boston! Yes, Venture Guides is recruiting companies to Boston.
Second, Venture Guides runs a sales training program for recent college graduates to support hiring for the Go-To-Market teams with ready-to-hire sales candidates for their portfolio companies. It is run by Dave Boffa, who was the GM of North American Sales at Rapid7 and in a small world moment, Dave and I actually worked together many, many moons ago.
After our tour, we sat down in the Venture Guides’ podcast studio which is where they record their own podcast called Built Not Born, to do a deeper dive into lots of topics like:
- Sage’s background and the early beginnings of her career in the tech industry at around 12 or 13 years old.
- The story of the Turbonomic acquisition.
- How Venture Guides came together and how they guide founders along the way.
- Advice on storytelling and building a scalable go-to-market motion.
- The firm’s progress to date and portfolio momentum.
- And more!
